Looping an animation

Hi everyone,
Im new to the forum and to Flash but Ive already checked out a bunch of books on Flash from the library. I still havent figured out this one thing thats been troubling me.
I was wondering how to loop an animation. For example, an escalator animation. Ive drawn in the escalator shown from the bottom and now I want to motion tween it to where the stairs move down. How do I loop it so that when the stairs that I drew are starting to go down, they simultaneously start at the top again. Does this involve 2 drawings of the same thing? Also any tips on easily scaling these types of point of view animations?
Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Normally, if you create a movieclip that animates along a timeline, it will automatically loop unless you place a stop(); command in the last frame.
If you are using Flash to draw the animation, due to the vector graphics, it will scale quite nicely. If you are using bitmap images, then you don't have as much freedom.

Similar Messages

Issue with looping swf animation - conflicting settings

I have a captivate project where I use a click box “stop” to inhibit the slide from moving to the next slide. (The click box set to no action, pause until user clicks.)
This forces the user (using the player control) to click the “forward” button to advance to the next slide. This is by design.
I have a Flash swf file embedded in one of the slides. This Flash file does not have a stop function. It is meant to continuously play (loop). I also have this Flash file set to loop in the Captivate project file.
The problem is this…
The click box “stop” (pause until user clicks) seems to be causing the SWF animation file to stop at the end of the slide. I want it to keep playing.
Does anyone have any idea as to how to do this? Is it even possible since I am essentially giving conflicting commands?
I suppose I could embed another SWF file (that would command the Captivate slide to stop) but I am unsure how to script the swf to pause the Captivate project. I could also use an animated gif, but I would like to use a swf file if possible.
Any ideas?
TPK

Hi 1970Skylark,
I still haven't been able to figure out the mechanism, but I have been able to determine something rather interesting (but mystifying).
If I take and drop a SWF (set to loop) or animated gif (set to loop infinitely) directly on a Captivate slide, and include a click box "stop" like I usually do, then when the slide timeline reaches the "stop" both types of animations stop.
However, if I first drop either of those animations and drop them in a PowerPoint slide, then import the slide into the Captivate project, then the animations continually play (even though the slide timeline might be at its end).
I haven't a clue as to why importing the PowerPoint slide changes the play behaviors of the animation, but it does. The problem with this approach is that I want to keep the file size of the project files down. Importing PowerPoint slides seems to cause some serious file size increases that I want to avoid.
TPK

Flash Player doesn't loop internet animations

My Flash Player doesn't loop animations that are supposed to repeat theirselves.
It always stops at the last frame,
but this only happens to online animations.
Is there some feature where I could change that?
Right-clicking and pressing ''repeat'' doesn't work either, since it doesn't even enable it.

No, of course not.
I have two computers,
my old one still has the old Flash Player (I think), and the new one the new version.
The old computer plays the animation like it's supposed to be, unlike my new one.
That's impossible if it's missing/containing a command.

5003 Error from Looping 3D animation

Hey all,
I routinely convert Flash animations to video by importing them into After Effects. Before doing this, I always switch all Movie Clips to Graphic Loops so the animations play live in the timeline... Its the only way to have nested animations show up when you import .swfs into After Effects - I think!
Well, I've never had any problems with this, it always works great. Until now. I've always wanted to add a little true 3D to my animations and was stoked on the inclusion of this in CS 5. I made a loop of 3D stripes on the "ground" of an animation (looking out the window of a train car, the 3D strips are to simulate passing vineyards) and it looks AWESOME! So, in preparation for taking the whole thing over to After Effects, I switched the loop (not the tween itself with the actual 3D effect, which I know can only be applied to a Movie Clip) to a Graphic Symbol, extending it to the end of the main timeline, and switched to loop. Inside Flash, it appears to work perfect, showing the 3D pan live when I scrub the playhead. Again, AWESOME! Then, I go to preview the movie and it breaks when compiling for some reason. giving me the "5003" Error. I'm so confused about this, because no other "movie clip" attribute, when applied to a movie clip that is nested, for live playback reasons, inside a looping Graphic symbol gives me a problem. I can use any filter, any blend mode no problem. If it works for live playback on the main timeline, it works for the published .swf and looks great when rendered to raster video in After Effects.
A lot of people say I should switch to After Effects if the end animation is intended to be video. The problem is that I love the animation environment in Flash and for my style it is perfect. I don't do alot of swooping or panning or whatever kind of stuff that AE is great for. Plus, synching sound is easier for me within flash. Soooo... My question is, has anyone found a way to make use of the 3D animation capabilities of CS5 in a way that is exportable to video, ie. AE? Is there a way to adjust my file to avoid the 5003 error? Or, on the other hand, is there a better way to import .swfs into After Effects that makes use of non-interactive looping movie clips?
Thanks for any help.

Thanks for your comments Mylenium, I originally thought it might be VRAM, but at 1gb (still quite an acceptable size from what I can tell - I'd expect more than 3 x 3d files for that) I originally dismissed it as the complexity of the files seemed quite low for it to be this. I'm still not completely convinced its the VRAM though because of the error message it gives, and have tried it on more complex 3d models and using more of them and it works fine on those. Seems odd about not letting me create a new document too. Would like the money get a 6gb card but a bit out of the budget range at the moment.
Do you know of a way to "optimise" 3d files so they take up less VRAM, for example reducing any unwanted textures, materials, vertices or faces within PS in a similar fashion to how illustrator can reduce the complexity/ number of shapes/ points etc? Cant ask the client as they dont have the time or I'd do this . Does rendering quality make a difference, or changing to a smart object? Doesnt seem to from what I've tried.
Re: using a dedicated 3d program, I'd be a bit reluctant to lose the ability to rotate / edit/ draw onto/ light etc objects within Photoshop now that I have a taste for it and go back to just using 3d renderings, otherwise I'd go down the route as suggested for a dedicated 3d package. Thanks for the suggestion though.

How to loop an animation

Hi
i have used a flash animation (that was given in default captivate library). i want to loop it but when i click in properties. i cant see any loop option. not even in options tab as mentioned in captivate help.
thnx in advance

Hi there
In addition to what Joe offered up I'll add this.
If you are creating an animation in Flash to drop into a Captivate, make sure you animate by creating a Movie Clip. As I understand it, you may animate in Flash by manipulatng the main timeline or by creating a Movie Clip. If you animate on the Main Timeline, it won't loop in Captivate. But if you animate via a Movie Clip, it will.
Cheers... Rick
Click here for Adobe Authorized Captivate and RoboHelp HTML Training
Click here for the SorcerStone Blog
Click here for RoboHelp and Captivate eBooks

Could someone please help and show me how to loop an animation twice? Sorry I am a beginner.

I am using flash cc and have created an animation. I just need some help on how to loop the movie twice and stop. Thanks.

Try this...
In frame 1 put the following code:
     var count;
In the last frame put the following code:
     if(!count){
           count = 1;
     } else {
           stop();

Looping an animation over entire timeline

I have my interface set up with several buttons that navigate
up and down my timeline. My goal is to have a movie clip animation
looping throughout the entire timeline. I've created an animation
(movie clip) that loops and placed it on my stage, but when I
publish the Flash file and play it back, the movie clip animation
stops playing on frame 10 (this is the frame where I have my first
action script to stop the timeline so users can select a button to
navigate elsewhere in my flash file. Is there anyone that can help
me figure out how to keep my animation looping continuously?
Thanks
Iggy

Where is the stop action? if the stop action is not in the
MC's timeline
than it is impossible for the MC to stop - since there's
nothing telling it
to do so. The only way to get it to stop would be to give the
MC an instance
name and then from another timeline or the main timeline have
this action:
myMC.stop();
or something to that effect. The only other way is to place:
stop();
on the last frame of the MC.
If neither of those are true for you then your MC has to
loop.
Can you provide the Fla?
Adobe Certified Expert
www.keyframer.com
www.mudbubble.com
(if you want to email me, don't look)
"iggy21" <[email protected]> wrote in
message
news:g79on6$lra$[email protected]..
> Chris,
>
> That's what I thought. But I have a Movie Clip set up to
animate over 30
> frame. In my scene, I have a brief animation of my
interface frame (it
> expands
> to fill the window) which I have an actionscript telling
it to stop on
> frame
> 10. Ideally, I want my movie clip to be animating the
entire time,even
> when the
> scene is stopped. But right now, my movie clip keeps
stopping with the
> action
> script. (The only action script that I have in my
movieclip is to make it
> loop)
>

Looping keyframed animation without hitches?

Hi, I'm upgrading a small application from AS2 to AS3, and so
far have everything working identically except for a movieclip
which has some hand-drawn animation on it (basically, a
walk-cycle).
In AS2, I could put this AS2 code on frame 5: gotoAndPlay(1)
and it would play frames 1-4 and then repeat smoothly.
In AS3, when I do the same thing, it seems to play frames
1-4, and then it plays frame 1 TWICE before looping.
i.e. in AS2 the rendered frames would look like:
1234123412341234
in AS3 they look like 1234112341123411234
I did some tracing and it looks like the code frame 1
actually only gets entered once - it gets drawn twice - once at
frame 5 and once at frame 1.
If I slow the flash app down to 1 FPS so I can watch what's
happening, I see this happening:
Second 1: Frame 1 AS trace and frame 1 drawn
Second 2: Frame 2 AS trace and frame 2 drawn
Second 3: Frame 3 AS trace and frame 3 drawn
Second 4: Frame 4 AS trace and frame 4 drawn
Second 5: Frame 5 AND 1 AS are traced, frame 1 is drawn
Second 6: No AS is traced, frame 1 is drawn again
Second 7: Frame 2 AS trace and frame 2 is drawn
Is there another function I should be using to loop this walk
cycle?
Thanks,
Ken

I am even more confused now. I added some traces and
eventhandlers to my script. Let's go back to the original, simple
example (walk cycle from frames 1-4; gotoAndPlay(1) command is on
frame 5).
With gotoAndPlay() in the Actions panel of frame 5 of the
timeline, my trace looks like:
... (skipping frames 1 and 2)
ENTER_FRAME event: frame 3
ACTIONS trace: frame 3
RENDER event: frame 3
(frame 3 renders)
ENTER_FRAME event: frame 4
ACTIONS trace: frame 4
RENDER event: frame 4
(frame 4 renders)
ENTER_FRAME event: frame 5
ACTIONS trace: frame 5 (gotoAndPlay immediately follows
trace)
ACTIONS trace: frame 1 (**weird**)
RENDER event: frame 1
(frame 1 renders)
ENTER_FRAME event: frame 1
RENDER event: frame 1 (**note it skipped ACTIONS: 1 because
it executed it earlier. Not important, just interesting :)**)
(frame 1 renders) (**AGAIN**) <-BAD
ENTER_FRAME event: frame 2
When I took out the gotoAndPlay from the Actions panel, and
added it to a RENDER event handler that checked currentFrame on
every frame and executed a gotoAndPlay(1) if the currentFrame was
5, I got:
... (skipping frames 1 and 2)
ENTER_FRAME event: frame 3
ACTIONS trace: frame 3
RENDER event: frame 3
(frame 3 renders)
ENTER_FRAME event: frame 4
ACTIONS trace: frame 4
RENDER event: frame 4
(frame 4 renders)
ENTER_FRAME event: frame 5
ACTIONS trace: frame 5
RENDER event: frame 5 (gotoAndPlay executes here)
(frame 1 renders)
ENTER_FRAME event: frame 1
ACTIONS trace: frame 1
RENDER event: frame 1
(frame 1 renders) (**AGAIN**) <-BAD
ENTER_FRAME event: frame 2
Any ideas?
I think the core problem is that:
After gotoAndPlay() is fired, the target frame is always
rendered before the next ENTER_FRAME event happens with the target
frame. (The RENDER event is dispatched before the actual render
happens). Therefore, no matter what I do, the execution will look
like:
gotoAndPlay(x)
frame x renders
enter frame x
frame x renders again.
...unless I manually take control with constant nextFrame()
or gotoAndStop() calls. Which is fine - aside from the "wrongness"
of playing a MovieClip without using its built-in "play"
functionality I don't feel it's necessarily any dirtier than having
a RENDER event handler constantly checking frame numbers anyways.
Oh, except that it will always be rendering frame n+1 when it is on
frame n.
Am I wrong, though?
Thanks so much for your help, kglad. ...if every internet
forum had one of you, the entire world's signal to noise ratio
would be doubled. (though 2*0 is still 0, isn't it :D )
Ken

Looping an animation and opening hyperlink

I have been told to add a trigger at the end of the timeline, and to insert
sym.play(0);
in order to loop the entire animation (use for an online ad) but it will not work.
Also, can not seem to get a url hyperlink to open at the end of the ad.
Any feedback will be appreciated.
Jessica Clark

Hi,
It sounds good that you have figured out.
Please share the resolution so that others can take benefit of that.
Regards,
Devendra

Looping simple animation

Hi all-
This seems like a VERY lame question, especially since I just spent 1/2 hour searching the discussion list and finding this subject many times!
I have a symbol. Right now, it is a "static" symbol, with a few text boxes and images but it will become an entire "tutorial" of about 50 seconds).
One of the images is a placeholder for the "tutorial" - I want to play part of the timeline, pause and let the user either go forward or backward to play the next section.
On top of this "larger" image I have placed another symbol:
1. A rectangle with some text and a "play" image (circle with a triangle).
2. The "play" circle by itself, this time in red, on top of the first.
All I want to do is have the "red" play image(#2) fade in and out over the part of the image (#1) (chrome circle with triangle) so it has a "pulse" look and feel.
The entire "main" symbol may be up to 50 seconds long. The "pulsing" image symbol starts at the very beginning and continues until it is clicked, at which time it will play the first section of the animation (by "going to" a label in the animation and playing).
For whatever reason, I cannot get the "pulsing" red image to loop until clicked!
I know this must be "Edge/javascript 101" but I can't seem to get it to loop!
The timeline for this symbol contains 2 "sections" for the "red arrow" image:
The first sets the opacity from 0 to 100 over a span of.250 seconds.
The second set the opacity from 100 to 0 over .250 seconds, with a gap of .250 seconds between them.
This symbol is set to play in the main timeline at 0 seconds. At the end on the symbol (.750 seconds) I added the trigger : sym.play(0);
It plays once and that is it.
Any help or ideas of what "Glaring" step I'm missing?
Thanks again for sll hte help!
James

Thanks Josh-
Since I have this one working from the main timeline, I'm going to leave it for now. I have many others I need to do so I'll give this a try on the next one :-)
I've been doing so much using the timeline that now I'm at the point I need to dive into the JavaScript commands and triggers :-)
I do have a general question about triggers and such:
My thought is in my projects I'm trying to make almost everything a symbol and calling these symbols from the main timeline. It seems to keep things less cluttered and easier to work with.
Is this a preferred way of working with animations inside Edge or is there a "more preferred" way of doing things?
Also, am I better adding triggers and such within the symbols (like I'm trying now) or from the main timeline? Again, I thought it would make more sense to handle everything related to a symbol within the symbol...
Thanks again!
James

Loop between animation on edge and external slider

Hello guys, anyone can share me a snippet for ,i have a div where is my animation maked non edge , i need when this animation finish load in the same div a slider gallery maked with a external plugin on jquery i am thinking on lazy load cos is like 120 photos each one 1920x815 pixels, when the gallery finish load again my animation and then the gallery looping betwen both. I am more designer than programmer so i need a hand guys. Thans for all
pd. Sorry for my bad english :)

Hi,
I usually just add the Reverse Proxy and Edge SAN's to the same public cert, but thats just me. There is no problem using a cert across Edge and a separate cert across RP. If you do, remember to mark the cert as exportable when requesting.
Edge Public Cert
The easiest way to do this is to add a multi-server Edge pool in the Topology builder. Add your Edge servers to this pool. You will find that when running through step 3 of the Deployment Wizard the cert SAN's will be populated with the Pool FQDN's for access,
Web Conf and AV.
You dont need to add access1 and access2 etc.
So perhaps your Edge cert will look more like this:-
Public Edge Cert
SN
-access.const.com
SAN
-access.const.com
-sip.const.com
-conf.const.com
I would just add the Reverse Proxy SAN's to that as follows:-
SAN
webext.const.com
meet.const.com
dialin.const.com
Lyncdiscover.const.com
You will see that I dropped all the .local entries. This is no longer permitted (.local on a public cert).
What else is required externally?
Public DNS, unless your DMZ DNS is resolving queries from the internet it won't do.
Please remember, if you see a post that helped you please click "Vote As Helpful" and if it answered your question, please click "Mark As Answer"
Lync Sorted blog

Looping an animation twice then stop

I have a banner that needs to play twice and then stop. Its 15 seconds and besides copying all the frames and pasting at the end to get this effect I want to do it with AS. Currently the animation is four mc's appearing at different frames in the main timeline. I figure using the if and else statements like if (should I create one movieclip for the entire animation and call it _mc_1) so if_mc_1 plays +++3 then stop?
something to this effect.
any help?
thx
rd

Yes, using a flag variable is probably your best bet. At frame 1 you'd do something like:
var loopCounter:int = 0;
And then at the end of your animation, on frame n, you would do like:
loopCounter++;
if(loopCounter < 2){
gotoAndPlay(2);
You go to 2, because if you go to 1 you'll reset the variable.

Animated .gif won't loop a specified amount of times

I created an animated .gif in photoshop and set it to loop twice. It works fine in every other browser except firefox. Here is a test example:
http://elliottkirby.com/test/
The box is set to animate across twice. Any thoughts? I tested setting it to loop "forever" and it works in FF...however the ad I'm creating has a loop time limit. I checked my config settings and image animation is set to normal. Thanks!

From what I understand of your problem;
- You have made your own animated gifs
- With the software to make these gifs you have set them to loop their animations 3 times
- They loop continuously
I don't see how java can be expected to interpret the animated gif software instructions to loop only 3 times and would assume that there are various proprietry ways of setting this (an assumption based on applets /javascript etc, that rely on the client-side browser interpreter). So, if you loop your animated gif or have any form of animated gif that you import into your program with getDocumentBase /getCodeBase as a (pre-animated) gif, then this is exactly what I would assume would happen.
The answer is to seperate your images with eg;-
smiley1[0];
smiley1[1];
smiley1[2];
run a seperate thread, cycle through them as you wish and stop.
I'm fairly sure that there is nothing in either the swing libraries or the jmf libraries that can resolve this any other way, so your choices are write extra code and have a pool of threads to control this, or leave it as is.

Animated Gif won't stop looping!

I'll try to format my question as best I can.
I have created a Java chat applet, and for the Java chat, I have created a "ChatPane" class for displaying the chat. ChatPane is an extension of Canvas, and every time the paint() method is called, the program loops through visible lines of text drawing them on a buffer image, then draws the buffer on the screen.
My problem lies in animated gifs. In my chatroom, chatters can type textual symbols that will be replaced with an image (or emoticon). I have created my animated icons in a popular animated gif editing program, and I have set particular icons to loop 3 times. The problem is that when the animated icon is displayed in my applet, the animation -doesn't stop- after 3 loops, it loops forever! I can't for the life of me figure out why! Can anyone provide any insight as to why the animations won't stop after 3 loops? The animations work just fine if displayed in a browser by themselves (they stop looping after 3 times)
Thank you for any help!
[email protected]
Tony N.

From what I understand of your problem;
- You have made your own animated gifs
- With the software to make these gifs you have set them to loop their animations 3 times
- They loop continuously
I don't see how java can be expected to interpret the animated gif software instructions to loop only 3 times and would assume that there are various proprietry ways of setting this (an assumption based on applets /javascript etc, that rely on the client-side browser interpreter). So, if you loop your animated gif or have any form of animated gif that you import into your program with getDocumentBase /getCodeBase as a (pre-animated) gif, then this is exactly what I would assume would happen.
The answer is to seperate your images with eg;-
smiley1[0];
smiley1[1];
smiley1[2];
run a seperate thread, cycle through them as you wish and stop.
I'm fairly sure that there is nothing in either the swing libraries or the jmf libraries that can resolve this any other way, so your choices are write extra code and have a pool of threads to control this, or leave it as is.

I need help looping animation

okay so i'm trying to loop the animation. i tryed using a for loop to loop it 4 times and it looped my trace statemnt 4 times but not my animation. any suggestions on how to loop the animation?
below is the code i have tried
import fl.motion.Animator;
for (var i:Number = 0; i < 5; i++)
trace(i);
var this_xml:XML = <Motion duration="449" xmlns="fl.motion.*" xmlns:geom="flash.geom.*" xmlns:filters="flash.filters.*">
<source>
<Source frameRate="19" x="0" y="0" scaleX="1" scaleY="1" rotation="0" elementType="movie clip" symbolName="cowanimation">
<dimensions>
<geom:Rectangle left="-8.5" top="-21.9" width="17.05" height="43.85"/>
</dimensions>
<transformationPoint>
<geom:Point x="0.49853372434017595" y="0.4994298745724059"/>
</transformationPoint>
</Source>
</source>
<Keyframe index="0" tweenSnap="true">
<tweens>
<CustomEase>
<geom:Point x="0.2096" y="0"/>
<geom:Point x="0.811" y="1"/>
</CustomEase>
</tweens>
</Keyframe>
<Keyframe index="194" tweenSnap="true" x="67.65" y="-80.3" rotation="60">
<tweens>
<CustomEase>
<geom:Point x="0.2096" y="0"/>
<geom:Point x="0.811" y="1"/>
</CustomEase>
</tweens>
</Keyframe>
<Keyframe index="240" tweenSnap="true" x="77.75" y="-62.25" rotation="-150">
<tweens>
<CustomEase>
<geom:Point x="0.2096" y="0"/>
<geom:Point x="0.811" y="1"/>
</CustomEase>
</tweens>
</Keyframe>
<Keyframe index="378" tweenSnap="true" x="17.35" y="13.05">
<tweens>
<CustomEase>
<geom:Point x="0.2096" y="0"/>
<geom:Point x="0.811" y="1"/>
</CustomEase>
</tweens>
</Keyframe>
<Keyframe index="448" tweenSnap="true" x="0" y="0" rotation="0">
<tweens>
<CustomEase>
<geom:Point x="0.2096" y="0"/>
<geom:Point x="0.811" y="1"/>
</CustomEase>
</tweens>
</Keyframe>
</Motion>;
var this_animator:Animator = new Animator(this_xml,this);
this_animator.play()

The problem with a for and while loop is that it will take complete the entire loop during the frame. That is why u dint see it. What u could do is increase the index by 1 each frame and then display that movie clip frame. Via gotoAndStop(index).

Looping an animation

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